Suzuki method

[Ein Heldenleben]

Didn't the RFH 'come with' Danemann grands originally, before the Steinway hegemony.

Hadn’t heard that . I suspect the ILEA bought hundreds of them in the sixties along with those wooden box gramophone players with inbuilt speakers and heavy styluses that sent spirals of vinyl flying. Spent many a happy hour pounding away on Danemanns at school …happy days

[oddoneout]

Hmm. That's a tricky one. Most parents want to do the best for their children. A kid shouldn't be 'put to the piano' as was frequently done, especially for girls, in previous generations. But realising a talent and wanting a child to make the most of it can hardly be classed as a selfish motive, surely?

(Sorry I couldn't stick with the Eric Whitacre interview. He only seems to have one musical palette, all very lovely of course, but when you've heard one piece the others are all the same. Biased view, I know. Maybe it should be on The Choir?)

Not selfish as such but the motive is not always unencumbered with other baggage such as parents not having had such opportunities themselves, or feeling that it is wrong not to make the most of obvious talents. Conflict when the child does not want to cooperate can be difficult, and it is a fine balancing act. My daughter showed very real talent from the outset on the oboe, and we were told by 2 successful professional musicians (one a woodwind player) that she "should" get proper tuition, do her grades and continue with it beyond school. She had other ideas and stopped playing altogether once she left school at 16. I wasn't overly bothered about whether she took it up as a possible career, but I was sad that she didn't keep it up to be part of the amateur music scene which can be such an enormous source of pleasure and satisfaction. I still wonder if the pressure, as she perceived it, that was being put on her(not from her parents I should add) didn't help, as it was not in line with what she was interested at that time in doing beyond school.

[Dave2002]

Do many schools have reasonable (or any) pianos which are available for practice? I'd have thought hardly any did - except for the kind of school which the likes of BoJo attend.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Do many schools have reasonable (or any) pianos which are available for practice? I'd have thought hardly any did - except for the kind of school which the likes of BoJo attend.

State schools certainly did in the sixties . Whether they do now often varies on the predilections of the head I believe . Some schools even have recording studios ; others barely a couple of serviceable pianos. There is some excellent music provision around and some patchy.

[duncan]

Interesting thread.

As a parent, I'd say the hardest choice is not the type of tuition - I'm sure all styles have their good and less good practitioners - but deciding whether to tiger parent or take a more laissez faire approach to practicing. Before our offspring started learning, we took a straw poll of our adult musician friends*. There was almost exactly a 50/50 split between camp pushy "I hated practice, had to be forced to do it, now very glad my parents did" and camp free-range "I loved playing as a child. Of course you can't force them to practice, it puts them off for life".

*social scientists and others will note the sampling bias in this survey

[ardcarp]

There is another sort of parent which wants to give kids lots of different 'tasters'. This might include a term on the trumpet, a term on the guitar and so on. And it might include swimming, fencing, horse-riding too. It's hard being a parent isn't it? And even harder being a grandparent suggesting what might be best for the g-kids!

A ghastly thing we heard last week was, that with the drastic cut in music provision in schools, peripatetics have been known to have five or six kids in a half-hour lesson, all playing different instruments. Aaaahhrrgh

[Ein Heldenleben]

Interesting thread.

As a parent, I'd say the hardest choice is not the type of tuition - I'm sure all styles have their good and less good practitioners - but deciding whether to tiger parent or take a more laissez faire approach to practicing. Before our offspring started learning, we took a straw poll of our adult musician friends*. There was almost exactly a 50/50 split between camp pushy "I hated practice, had to be forced to do it, now very glad my parents did" and camp free-range "I loved playing as a child. Of course you can't force them to practice, it puts them off for life".

*social scientists and others will note the sampling bias in this survey

The key thing is not practice (unless you want to be a professional or serious amateur ) but establishing a connection with music be it classical , jazz , rock , pop. If that happens then the practice will come in the wake of the connection. Even if it’s learning to pick out pop tunes and harmonise them.. I say “even “ in fact that’s a really useful skill in itself. Scales , arpeggios and Hanon etc are boring - though sadly important .

[Jonathan B]

This topic inspired me to register as a user ... after dropping in periodically for many years (once I discovered the site after the old BBC forum closed down).

I want to reassure Colonel Bogey that the experiences we had getting our daughter lessons from a Suzuki teacher were wholly good, though that speaks for the quality of the particular teacher as well as the method.

The benefits are being able to start at a young age without having first to understand the technicalities of stave notation. And group lessons as well as individual lessons being a feature, meaning that music is fun and not lonely. (This was violin, I can't imagine how it works with piano).

Learning to read music is very much part of it, in fact right from the beginning "fun" reading activities were part of group lessons (games relating clapped out rhythms to notations). As soon as they were able the teacher got groups sight-reading straightforward ensemble pieces, about the same age as those who started learning via school peripatetic teachers.

Other things that are helpful are the common repertoire. There were end of term social concerts where kids played something to others - which inspired them with what the older children were doing - and group play-throughs where the beginners could feel good because on the pieces they could do they were playing alongside the older kids. (If the child gets keen, there are residential holidays they can attend as well, run in the same way).

Plus a lot of out-of-repertoire music, essentially the sort of thing a non-Suzuki student at the same stage would be playing. In fact my daughter's teacher got all her pupils to do ABRSM Grade 5 (because it was a requirement to audition for the local youth orchestra, and the teacher pushed hard for them to join and learn orchestral skills) and then 7 and 8.

I don't think our daughter was exceptional in using the early start to explore other instruments. I admit I encouraged piano (on which I am a feeble practitioner) and while she is no expert she now gets a lot of pleasure from it. And for some reason she wanted to take up flute, and very quickly advanced to Grade 8+.

I think the key is not to think of Suzuki lessons as being about hot-housing a virtuoso so much as learning a life skill (in fact I think that is what Suzuki always claimed to be aiming at). Now daughter is at university - not studying music - she has great fun joining the orchestra and also finding a few like-minded string players to form a string quartet. She may have started playing by imitation, but she sight-reads fluently.

[Braunschlag]

all playing different instruments[/I]. Aaaahhrrgh

This has been fairly common now for longer than you’d think (certainly in N Yorks).
Frau Braunschlag is a peri with them and also teaches at the Saturday morning music centre.
Her current ‘band’ consists of three violas and one clarinet! The entire music service has been declining for the past 5-6 years, optimistically I’d guess it’ll be finished within the next five (NYCC is due to be divvied up into three areas, I can see the music service being abandoned at that point).
Parents can choose to have an individual lesson but the cost is way over local private teachers (overheads, pensions etc).
The other problem is that instrumental teachers are now paid as ‘instructors’. Frau B is a graduate with a PGCE and a teaching diploma (LTCL). Frankly, she’d earn more in Aldi and is biding her time now.

[mikealdren]

As I've commented elsewhere, just before Covid I was invited to the 50th anniversary of the Teesside Youth Orchestra, now the Tees Valley YO. I was struck by how good the current orchestra is, way better than 50 years ago. The conductor said that, yes it was very good but it now has a much larger catchment area as it is about the only Youth Orchestra left between Scotland and Leicestershire. Furthermore, many of the pupils were at private schools rather than state schools, they hardly existed in Teesside in my youth! A friend who had enjoyed a career as a professional cellist lamented that, coming from the area where he did, nowadays he would never have had the teaching to give him a career in music. Living in South London, and married to a violin teacher, I can only say that it's similar here.

As to the North Riding, you have my sympathy, I went to school there and played in the Youth Orchestra in the '60s. When Teesside was formed we lost a large proportion of the orchestra but it was built back with a strong peripatetic team and an inspirational conductor, Barry Griffiths. The system of giving free lessons in schools, without means testing, certainly gave large numbers of children a great start in music and many of those players are still gracing our professional and amateur orchestras today.
As to the topic in question, Suzuki teaching, while my wife and I have some reservations about the Suzuki method, the key to learning any instrument is to find one of those inspirational teachers.

[Dave2002]

State schools certainly did in the sixties . Whether they do now often varies on the predilections of the head I believe . Some schools even have recording studios ; others barely a couple of serviceable pianos. There is some excellent music provision around and some patchy.

Unfortunately many schools are significantly underfunded. I am aware of schools were the music teacher was "let go" simply because the budget had to be cut back, and the head teacher and other decision makers felt they had no choice but to direct resources in other directions. There was no question that the music teacher was in any way responsible for that - acceptable performance - but if there's no money to provide for staff like that, then there's a real problem. There are many schools in which funds allocated to one area are vired to another - which shouldn't happen - but often head teachers feel they have no other way to allocate the funds they receive.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This topic inspired me to register as a user ... after dropping in periodically for many years (once I discovered the site after the old BBC forum closed down).

I want to reassure Colonel Bogey that the experiences we had getting our daughter lessons from a Suzuki teacher were wholly good, though that speaks for the quality of the particular teacher as well as the method.

The benefits are being able to start at a young age without having first to understand the technicalities of stave notation. And group lessons as well as individual lessons being a feature, meaning that music is fun and not lonely. (This was violin, I can't imagine how it works with piano).

Learning to read music is very much part of it, in fact right from the beginning "fun" reading activities were part of group lessons (games relating clapped out rhythms to notations). As soon as they were able the teacher got groups sight-reading straightforward ensemble pieces, about the same age as those who started learning via school peripatetic teachers.

Other things that are helpful are the common repertoire. There were end of term social concerts where kids played something to others - which inspired them with what the older children were doing - and group play-throughs where the beginners could feel good because on the pieces they could do they were playing alongside the older kids. (If the child gets keen, there are residential holidays they can attend as well, run in the same way).

Plus a lot of out-of-repertoire music, essentially the sort of thing a non-Suzuki student at the same stage would be playing. In fact my daughter's teacher got all her pupils to do ABRSM Grade 5 (because it was a requirement to audition for the local youth orchestra, and the teacher pushed hard for them to join and learn orchestral skills) and then 7 and 8.

I don't think our daughter was exceptional in using the early start to explore other instruments. I admit I encouraged piano (on which I am a feeble practitioner) and while she is no expert she now gets a lot of pleasure from it. And for some reason she wanted to take up flute, and very quickly advanced to Grade 8+.

I think the key is not to think of Suzuki lessons as being about hot-housing a virtuoso so much as learning a life skill (in fact I think that is what Suzuki always claimed to be aiming at). Now daughter is at university - not studying music - she has great fun joining the orchestra and also finding a few like-minded string players to form a string quartet. She may have started playing by imitation, but she sight-reads fluently.

An excellent and informative post . Welcome to the forum…

[Cockney Sparrow]

Unfortunately many schools are significantly underfunded. I am aware of schools were the music teacher was "let go" simply because the budget had to be cut back, and the head teacher and other decision makers felt they had no choice but to direct resources in other directions. There was no question that the music teacher was in any way responsible for that - acceptable performance - but if there's no money to provide for staff like that, then there's a real problem. There are many schools in which funds allocated to one area are vired to another - which shouldn't happen - but often head teachers feel they have no other way to allocate the funds they receive.

Money may well be part of it - particularly after the strain of Covid on budgets. But don't let it be another Covid front for negative outcomes. Head teachers are under threat if they don't get their SATs and GCSE/A Level etc results and place in the tables. It certainly only wasn't about money prior to the pandemic - it was about timetables and the choice of becoming a grade/exam/ university entrance factory in preference. Concerts, instrumental teaching - annual visit to a concert - seen as a diversion from what is important. (We have Gove and his Special Advisor in the Dept for Education to thank for creating that environment...)

Interesting that, in the most part, when parents are paying for their children's education they expect it to include music and arts, and full opportunity for instrumental tuition and performance. The divide between the privately educated and the rest will be ever more apparent in the coming years. However, as the bulk of parents don't value music education, certainly not until they see the results of good music education. this abandonment is unlikely to appear on any radar as a "failure to level up" issue. Failure to level up those not blessed with the money, time and resources, that is, not a North/South or other levelling up focus.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Money may well be part of it - particularly after the strain of Covid on budgets. But don't let it be another Covid front for negative outcomes. Head teachers are under threat if they don't get their SATs and GCSE/A Level etc results and place in the tables. It certainly only wasn't about money prior to the pandemic - it was about timetables and the choice of becoming a grade/exam/ university entrance factory in preference. Concerts, instrumental teaching - annual visit to a concert - seen as a diversion from what is important. (We have Gove and his Special Advisor in the Dept for Education to thank for creating that environment...)

Interesting that, in the most part, when parents are paying for their children's education they expect it to include music and arts, and full opportunity for instrumental tuition and performance. The divide between the privately educated and the rest will be ever more apparent in the coming years. However, as the bulk of parents don't value music education, certainly not until they see the results of good music education. this abandonment is unlikely to appear on any radar as a "failure to level up" issue. Failure to level up those not blessed with the money, time and resources, that is, not a North/South or other levelling up focus.

If you take a narrowly reductionist view of education one reason perhaps that parents want music education for their children is to give an edge in the personal statement at university entrance time. But it’s a pointless process - an arms race really . I read that one academic said how can you make a decision when. ” every one has grade eight cello”?
One thing though ABRSM grades have definitely not dumbed down . 10 years ago I met a University music student who’d had to learn the Moonlight for Grade 8 piano . That last movement - absolute ‘mare - octave trills on the fourth and fifth finger , horrible non standard scale passages …you name it. Opus 14 no 1 - now there’s a reasonable ask.

[mikealdren]

In South London, parents want their children to be grade 5/6 by 11 for music scholarships at independent schools. Totally agree about the ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall too.